My birthday went as I had planned, fairly anonymously! I had the folks take me to the DC Chop House on 7th St NW near the MCI arena, and that was about that. My father, as is his way, made a spectacle of himself by complaining about the prices, both of food and drink.

Being deaf he has a bad tendency to over compensate when others don't hear what he says, so there was a good amount of yelling outbursts. I think that is the last time I'm ever going to go out to a restaurant with him. "Can't take him anywhere!"

Before I all but quit going out into the city farce, I'd gotten that same way at bars and clubs and with myself in general. Life has a tendancy to become too busy and stall out completely, but nevertheless, I sweat beads of kinetic energy in my own special task to become more focussed on the project and determined to stay focussed on the project just so I can face myself with quiet intelligence despite what the world has to say about me, and in keeping to that intelligence, it feels a lot better now that I've identified how I want to live and where I want to live it, have taken a solid gaze at the old trusty game plan I developed as a child, and after having throttled myself with detection bits across a thousand shortcuts and hand-polished voices I like to think I find in books written just for me, music, fleshpots, sweatshops, moving violations, kindly nods to city fathers to endorse, system bugs, and bugged rugs created just for me, and other photosynthetic blankets of doom, parting gloom, private room closed eye well-hung mushroom clouds a=made for me, all fitting for my time, our tenor, these tribulations flitting back and forth like a ceiling cluttered with Blum's chintzy wire mobiles pointing nowhere in particular and everywhere at once, so much so that sometimes life in this old neighborhood just feels in a word, obsolete.

That this has anything to do with Richard Shipmanhe would most certainly plead confusion, that would make him correct once again. Everything is too expensive, and he is confused, and no doubt very proud of it. Sometimes, I chagrin to see myself in him. In others, I thank God every day is Judgement Day and that we, he and I, boast not a few spectacular differences that I shouldn't worry about Richard's particular hill of beans, but have enough bean hills of my own to keep me busy sorting out this from that, thank you very much...

I’d have the room that I need to live another ten years without clutter or squalor except that of the street itself, or should we really begin to cash in on ourselves, we could sell out and get into that promised mansion in the sky, mountain or seashore, urban or primal, heaven or hell, wherever the American pursuit leads.

But I see how it is. Take away man's dignity in work, his manhood, his relevance, and he soon becomes unnaturally obsessed about the smallest speck of dust in the universe when it is very obvious that this particular speck of dust is somebody else's job.

It still may be tougher getting from here to North Arlington than I want it to be, and so the quest to annex the property next door continues its haunt and eats up a lot of brainpower better spent elsewhere I suppose, but the whole affair remains a valuable alternative mythology and day to day memory builder for me, such as it is. Greg II and I haven't spoken since just before the holidays. But one thing is for sure, running this small house formerly known as the Dollhouse rather anonymously ain't the end of the line for me, or if it is, it is expressly against my will, especially if it is alongside these new neighbors who simply ain't a part of the GT plan, but you know me, I usually defer to the host of natural configurations to do most of the work, until that driven part of me steps in to straighten out the kinks and assume in kind what's been given to or is in the process of being taken away from me, whatever the spark is called.

The same's been said about this house on many an occasion, but there's noise and clutter, chaos and anger next door. We've also got rain drainage and perhaps a rodent problem in common. I'd like to solve both problems in one swoop. To get serious about rebuilding this neighborhood so that it can be ready to inherit its present beckoning. The Gabriel and Sue merger of 109 and 111 Eighteenth St. is magical in concept and practicality. I'd have the room that I need to live another ten years without clutter or squalor except that of the street itself, or should we really begin to cash in on ourselves, we could sell out and get into that promised mansion in the sky, mountain or seashore, urban or primal, heaven or hell, wherever the American pursuit leads.

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Quoth the Raven

"Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect itself from the order of fashion. Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant, indeed retroactive ruins, are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take them most seriously."